2

      Detective Inspector Johnny Mann stepped out of his car and straight into a sauna. In the half-hour he’d been driving, cocooned in air-conditioning, the morning heat had arrived outside, sucked all the moisture from the ground and left the air as thick as a wet blanket.

      He put on his sunglasses, pushed his black hair away from his face and looked up at the sky. His dark eyes were swamped with blue. Clear – good. He scanned the horizon … not for long. A bank of clouds sat pregnant with rain and ready to drop. A typical Hong Kong summer – forty degrees and a hundred per cent humidity – the perfect time to go somewhere else. But Mann wasn’t going anywhere. This was the end of a long night and the beginning of an even longer day. He had been on the first response team when they’d found the body. Hong Kong was used to murders, but not like this one.

      He checked his watch and looked around the car park – one other vehicle – an unmarked police car. He was relieved. It meant he wouldn’t have to hang about. The autopsy was scheduled for eight. It was twenty to. The sooner they got going, the sooner they’d be able to get out. The mortuary was a place he’d never got used to. The bodies didn’t bother him but the smell – dentist meets butchers – stayed in his nostrils like school dinners and old people’s homes – there for life.

      He took off his jacket and draped it over the back seat before reaching in and pulling out his briefcase. Then he slammed the door shut and strode across the gravel to the mortuary entrance. Mann had a tall, athletic English frame along with high cheekbones and a square jaw. He had hooded eyes: deep set, dark chocolate, and smudged with sadness.

      His finger was barely off the buzzer before Kin Tak, the young mortuary assistant, appeared. He was smiling – enthusiastic as always – glad to see that Mann was early and eager to begin the morning’s autopsy rota. Dressed in his off-white coat, Kin Tak had that permanently dishevelled look of someone who had never known youth and had spent far too much time caring for dead people. In the mortuary hierarchy Kin Tak was a Diener. He moved, handled and washed the bodies. He didn’t get to do the technician’s job of removing and replacing the organs or sewing up the bodies afterwards, although he was hoping to do that someday. He practised his stitching whenever he could and when no one was looking.

      Mann shivered as he hit the wall of cold just inside the door of the once ‘clinically clean’ but now slightly grubby autopsy room. The room had to be kept below minus five to stop further decomposition on bodies awaiting identification and autopsies. He stood squinting beneath a flickering fluorescent strip-light.

      ‘Full house?’ He looked around at the stainless-steel fridges that ran along three sides of the room.

      ‘All but two drawers. We had a gang fight come in overnight – twelve chopped – lots of needlework to be done. Lots of practice.’

      Two men emerged from a doorway on Mann’s left. He knew one of them well – Detective Sergeant Ng. They’d worked together at the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau. The other man – young and slight – Mann had never seen before.

      ‘Good to see you again, Ng.’

      ‘Hello, Genghis.’ Ng came forward to shake Mann’s hand warmly. Ng was portly, in his mid-forties and already losing his hair, but still a notorious flirt. His soft brown puppy eyes, quick smile and deep intelligence made him a magnet for women. He always seemed to find one to look after him. ‘Thought they’d managed to lose you in the New Territories,’ said Ng with a lopsided smile. ‘I’m glad to see they didn’t.’

      ‘You know me, Confucius – easy-going type, can’t think why some people don’t like me.’ Mann grinned. ‘How’s it going with you?’

      ‘Not bad, not bad at all, thanks. Still working too hard for too little pay. We miss you down at the OCTB – things are really quiet there without you.’

      Mann